An electric MR2

[Joesson]

@Ardent - I noticed the remote control 2 managed quite well with the aerial down, I guess if the aerial was up the operating range would be extended

[Chilli Girl]

I liked the blue stripes on the side vents...

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Ditto John! I really like it, even the door mirror stripes.  Hmmmm, just abit different, think it would look good on silver too!

[Ardent]

Whether we like it or not, elec vehicles in some form or another are coming.
(Quite where the juice is coming from to power them is another question)
That aside.

MR2 miles aside. The rest of mine are 98% town work. Rarely even get on an A road and extremely rare to hit the Motorway.
As much as it pains me to say it, my daily driver; the anti christ of motoring in it's eye bleaching awful shape, the Prius;
has turned out to be an absolute hoot in the environment in which I do my miles. (Mines the Generation 2 the particular awful looking one.)

0-60 in 10ish, not mind warpiong, but not too shabby either.
But, in the 0-30 0-40 bracket, which is the bulk of the time, it is very brisk.

I find it a real giggle, as nobody expects to be out dragged by a prius.
To be fair, it's simply me using the element of suprise. At the lights, they don't know "it's on" until it is too late.

As I sit there silently with 2.5 V6 tdi levels of torque (400Nm) at my disposal and
combined with a linear transmission. When the lights change, I'm simply up and off.

In the time it has taken the other car to release the clutch - gather revs and accelerate only now have they realised they are way behind they then have to go for 2nd and start again whilst I'm accelerating in a linear manner.
Too late - game over. Regulation speed for the road has been reached. And if they're in a stop-start type car. Well you can do the maths.

So having gone down hybrid route and lived with a prius. I have come to the conclusion. They (the car itself) is not as slow as the media would have you believe. It is predominately the people that buy them that are slow.
Always the exception to the rule though. 

The standard prius owner probably does'nt even reliase they have 400Nm to play with.

And this is from a car with its feet firmly in the eco camp.
Should you pull up against a BMW i3, you better have your game face on. Boy do they take off. 

If we could transplant i3 tech into a 2, you would need a regular supply of incontinance products as you will pi55 yourself laughing.

[delhusband]

how about this from 7 years ago 

Like how in the vid it still beeps when reverse is engaged 

[Ardent]

Yeah spotted that. Did'nt know whether to laugh or cry. 

[delhusband]

Yeah spotted that. Did'nt know whether to laugh or cry. 

+1  Similar feelings about electric. I'd really really miss manual transmission and engine note, with an EV - I like drama, noise and input. But I'd enjoy the torque, no question.

[Ardent]

+1 to all you say.

Which is the bit that caught me out in the 2 mr2 vids above, they still have manual transmission.
The prius is a CVT, but the electric motor in green MK2 vid is bolted to the stock gearbox/clutch/transaxle via an adapter plate. Very neat.

Did not expect that.

Edit
Go to 1:16 in the green mr2 vid on page 1

[jvanzyl]

Whether we like it or not, elec vehicles in some form or another are coming.
(Quite where the juice is coming from to power them is another question)
That aside.

MR2 miles aside. The rest of mine are 98% town work. Rarely even get on an A road and extremely rare to hit the Motorway.
As much as it pains me to say it, my daily driver; the anti christ of motoring in it's eye bleaching awful shape, the Prius;
has turned out to be an absolute hoot in the environment in which I do my miles. (Mines the Generation 2 the particular awful looking one.)

0-60 in 10ish, not mind warpiong, but not too shabby either.
But, in the 0-30 0-40 bracket, which is the bulk of the time, it is very brisk.

I find it a real giggle, as nobody expects to be out dragged by a prius.
To be fair, it's simply me using the element of suprise. At the lights, they don't know "it's on" until it is too late.

As I sit there silently with 2.5 V6 tdi levels of torque (400Nm) at my disposal and
combined with a linear transmission. When the lights change, I'm simply up and off.

In the time it has taken the other car to release the clutch - gather revs and accelerate only now have they realised they are way behind they then have to go for 2nd and start again whilst I'm accelerating in a linear manner.
Too late - game over. Regulation speed for the road has been reached. And if they're in a stop-start type car. Well you can do the maths.

So having gone down hybrid route and lived with a prius. I have come to the conclusion. They (the car itself) is not as slow as the media would have you believe. It is predominately the people that buy them that are slow.
Always the exception to the rule though. 

The standard prius owner probably does'nt even reliase they have 400Nm to play with.

And this is from a car with its feet firmly in the eco camp.
Should you pull up against a BMW i3, you better have your game face on. Boy do they take off. 

If we could transplant i3 tech into a 2, you would need a regular supply of incontinance products as you will pi55 yourself laughing.

However, it's still a Prius..... And it's not so much the car I have a problem with, it's the "ethos" behind it that I resent...

The most environmentally friendly car you can buy is actually a Jeep wrangler. Materials are (largely) locally sourced, uncomplicated to refine and it's a relatively simple car to manufacture and maintain.  Both the Prius and Wrangler consume petrol, albeit the Jeep wrangler consumers more-  but when compared to the Prius manufacturing process it literally fades into insignificance from a manufacturing to end of life scale.

The bit that gets me is the perception that was pushed by the media and the celebs who jumped on the bandwagon that the Prius driver was clearly more caring about the environment than those who potentially stuck with their "old banger" and then the governments started punishing the owners of cars with larger capacity engines under the pretence that this was going to help the environment when actually it would do the opposite in the majority of instances (my opinion and observation here).


BUT I totally take your point about shoving that engine or an i3 in the MR2... It would be a laugh.

However if you wanted a manual transmission then maybe look at the crz and then when you have that look at the supercharger kit [emoji16]

Sorry.. Rant over...

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[Ardent]

JV quote
The bit that gets me is the perception that was pushed by the media and the celebs who jumped on the bandwagon that the Prius driver was clearly more caring about the environment than those who potentially stuck with their "old banger" and then the governments started punishing the owners of cars with larger capacity engines under the pretence that this was going to help the environment when actually it would do the opposite in the majority of instances

Totally agree.
Thankfully, I dont carry the eco baggage.

My reasons to buy. On a scale of 1 - 5
Eco look at me look at me pretentiousness - 0
£10 tax - 5
more mpg than my 2.8 v6 - 5
That was my decision making process.

Do I miss the V6 goodness  oh yeah.

[jonbill]

I'm intrigued John,  what is the total energy cost of a new wrangler compared to a new prius, delivered to the door of a UK customer?

[jvanzyl]

I'm intrigued John,  what is the total energy cost of a new wrangler compared to a new prius, delivered to the door of a UK customer?

No idea on the specific for delivered. But I do know that there was a load of stuff compiled when considered end to end manufacturing and total life span plus recycling components and it showed that something like 80% of "cost/impact" was in the manufacturing and 20 in the running.. and Jeep came out top. .
Toyota disputed it and said the ratio was the other way round, as it meant that cars that consumed less energy during "running" came out better...

I'll have to dig around to see what stats I can dig out... It'll just make more annoyed as I reacquaint myself with it all.. but anyway.

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[jonbill]

Thanks John, would be interesting to read.

[Ardent]

I have no specifics.  But recall issues with how the batts are made. Where they are made then transported for install. What they are made of. How that is mined etc etc

I dont  care much past the £10 tax

[BahnStormer]

I'm intrigued John,  what is the total energy cost of a new wrangler compared to a new prius, delivered to the door of a UK customer?

No idea on the specific for delivered. But I do know that there was a load of stuff compiled when considered end to end manufacturing and total life span plus recycling components and it showed that something like 80% of "cost/impact" was in the manufacturing and 20 in the running.. and Jeep came out top. .
Toyota disputed it and said the ratio was the other way round, as it meant that cars that consumed less energy during "running" came out better...

I'll have to dig around to see what stats I can dig out... It'll just make more annoyed as I reacquaint myself with it all.. but anyway.

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I'll have a hunt around for it too, but I saw a different study as I don't think it was a Jeep wrangler they were comparing it to - something more EU focused, but still a large petrol engined car like a BMW X5 / Audi Q7 (but one that was produced in the EU - not the Chinese manufactured ones like most of them are).... the outcome was the same - you had to keep them for ten years and do about 15,000 a year before the environmental impacts balanced out and the large petrol engined impact was a bad as the Prius. In the first 5 years of ownership, the EV's and Hybrids are far worse than any petrol car (or diesel, if you're only looking at CO2 and ignoring NO and particulates)...

The only difference is that the emissions that EV's and Hybrids produce during usage (in a city) will have less impact than fossil fuels... while their environmental impact is upfront in the increased transport costs and the mining of rare minerals in places like Bolivia/Chile, where the governments just want the income and don't care about the impact.

EV's are a funky idea and we need to persist, but anybody who thinks they're doing the environment a favour with them now is deluding themselves: they need to be charged up at your home on solar panels and use something other than Lithium for the batteries before they'll get close to the more established technologies.

IMO Hydrogen fuel cell is the way forward: electrolysis of water to produce your Oxygen and Hydrogen and then it produces water and energy when they're re-combined (burned / otherwise)... energy intensive to produce the fuel, but that's fine if you're doing that via a green method.... the Liquid hydrogen is double the energy density of liquid propane.... and it would be comparable to filling up with LNG in a car.... there's just a LOT more work to do with the distribution network and storage of liquid Hydrogen!

[jvanzyl]

+1 on the hydrogen way forward.
The model for use is near identical to what we have now, and we have a decent infrastructure to support it.

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[BahnStormer]

I found a brief, fairly broad-brush summary of US studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM.... conclusion was pretty varied - but it mostly seemed to depended on size of battery and source of electricity in your region.... seemed to vary from a break even point of 4 months to 6 years.... but that comparing to US petrol cars, specifically: an "average older car's CO2 of ~520g/mile"... even converting to the UK/EU (per km), that rating that isf 323g/km, so that is still HUGE.

In comparison to EU cars: my s'charged petrol Audi A6 is 190g/km and even a mid-sized SUV like an Audi Q5 is ~150g/km (in petrol, even lower in the TDI - but we won't use diesel as the argument in favour of IC engines!).... so the cross-over point of a new petrol engine vs a new hybrid/electric can be anything from 8 months to 12 years (towards the latter if you're looking at cars with larger batteries like Teslas)... assuming you're doing ~12,000 miles per year.... more like 1 year to 18 years if you're talking about the more common UK average of ~8000 miles per year....

Also - that assumes you're buying two new cars...

In summary - if you're buying a small, lightweight hybrid and keeping it for >5 years you might be doing the environment less harm than the petrol alternatives...